Author and award-winning satirist Matt Burriesci kicks off the academic year as a guest for IU East’s Visiting Writer Series, a Mindful Explorations event.
Lauded for his sharp wit and nuanced prose, Burriesci will read from his published novel and book of essays, as well as brief selections from his newest work, Theseus, at 7 p.m. on Monday, October 3, in the First Bank Richmond Community Room, located in Whitewater Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
In the afternoon, Burriesci will provide a talk on “Writing Beyond Academia,” delivering crucial advice to student writers interested in finding a profession outside of college. IU East faculty and staff are welcome to attend. Students in attendance will include those enrolled in Tanya Perkins’ course, ENG-W206: Introduction to Creative Writing. Perkins is an associate professor of English.
Following the event, a recording of the reading will be available on IU East Facebook Live at noon on Friday, October 7.
The Visiting Writers Series is sponsored by the IU East School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Mindful Explorations, courtesy of the William H. and Jean R. Reller Endowment. The event is presented by First Bank Richmond.
“Matt Burriesci’s fiction and nonfiction are noteworthy for their dramatic interplay between historical perspective and satirical sting,” Brian Brodeur, associate professor of English at IU East said. “Regardless of genre, Burriesci’s writing achieves a rare balance of intellectual rigor and knee-slapping hilarity, offering to readers insights into the absurdities of such professional fields as American politics, arts administration, and philanthropy, but always with an underlying tenderness that makes the digs and jabs of this work feel earned.”
Burriesci was raised in Geneva, Illinois. He holds a B.A.in English and Rhetoric from the University of Illinois and an M.F.A. in Fiction from George Mason University.
He is the executive director of the Providence Athenaeum, one of the oldest libraries in the United States. He began his career at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. From 1999 to 2011, he served in various capacities at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), including as executive director. During his tenure at AWP, Burriesci helped build the largest and most diverse literary conference in North America. He has also served as the executive director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation at the Folger Shakespeare Library. He is presently at work on a novel and a collection of essays.
Burriesci’s essays and short fiction have been published in numerous outlets, including Guernica, Salon, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the author of Dead White Guys: A Father, his Daughter, and The Great Books of the Western World, which has been translated into several languages. He is also the author of the novel Nonprofit, which won the 2014 AWP Award for the Novel.
Burriesci’s latest novel, Theseus, is a re-telling of the Greek hero’s story from a realistic perspective, focusing on the origin of his political innovations. The Greeks believed Theseus to be a real person, and they credited him with the invention of democracy. The novel retraces Theseus’s time as a prisoner of Imperial Crete, where he is subjected to horrific challenges and exposed to philosophical ideas that challenge his preconceptions about human nature.
IU East’s Creative Writing program offers the Regional Writers Series and the Visiting Writers Series.
“Both series give IU East students, faculty, and staff, as well as writers and literary enthusiasts in the broader region, an opportunity to hear some of the most exciting fiction, nonfiction and poetry being written in the United States today,” Brodeur said. “These events are always free and open to the public.”
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